Eleven lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded Comenius grants that will allow them to work with their teams on an innovation project within their own teaching. They have been awarded three grants of 100,000 euros within the Senior Fellows programme and four grants of 50,000 euros within…

Yuchen Lian defended her thesis on AI and language evolution at Leiden University.

As of 12 Januari 2026, the FSW faculty building is called Agora. This name was chosen by the FSW community. In ancient Greece, the agora was the heart of the city: a place for meeting, dialogue and the exchange of ideas. This is exactly how we see our faculty building: an open space where knowledge,…

Recently, archaeologist Dr Wei Chu received a grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for an excavation in the Carpathian Mountains. Originally planning for an excavation in Ukraine, his plans were disrupted by the war. ‘We had to change plans really quickly.’

When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20 years later, she is starting a research project on the kinship of the language Awapit with the Quechua language that was spread by the Incas.

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

Medewerkers van de Universiteit Leiden trappen maandag 10 maart de estafettestaking af van de Nederlandse universiteiten tegen de kabinetsbezuinigingen.

Literature – and films and social media too – helps us understand ourselves and society. That makes literary studies an eternally modern discipline, especially if you dare to combine it with other disciplines, says Nidesh Lawtoo.

In the course of 2020 the Faculty of Archaeology was bolstered by some new staff members. Due to the coronavirus situation, sadly, this went for a large part unnoticed. In a series of interviews we are catching up, giving the floor to our new colleagues. We kick off with Dr Tuna Kalayci, who joined…

Professor Peter Bisschop has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. He will invest the 2.5 million euros in his research into puranas: ancient texts, commonly written in Sanskrit, that are up to fifteen hundred years old.

For the eleventh time in a row, Leiden University’s unique liberal arts and sciences programme has been awarded the ‘Top Rated Programme’ quality seal by Keuzegids universiteiten 2024.

Leiden University's Kiem grants aim to help develop new interdisciplinary and interfaculty collaborations and encounters. In the first round, a Kiem grant was awarded to a group of researchers from the Faculty of Archaeology, the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the LUMC for the organisation of a symposium…

South African poet Antjie Krog will be the writer in residence at Leiden University in autumn 2021. Krog is famous for her poetry collections and books, which are often inspired by the history of South Africa. In her role as writer in residence, she will give the annual Albert Verwey Lecture and a series…

On 3 September 2025, more than 30 archaeological objects were returned to Peru, Panama and Costa Rica. The objects come from a private collection belonging to the descendants of physician and amateur archaeologist Dr Hans Feriz. In her will, his daughter stipulated that the objects collected by her…

An international team of researchers led by astronomers from Leiden University (the Netherlands) has produced the first sharp radio maps of the universe at low frequencies. Thanks to a new calibration technique, they bypassed the disturbances of the Earth's ionosphere. They used the new method to study…

Amphorae are usually associated with the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. ‘​​​​​​​Yet, in some cases, such as Byzantium, amphorae existed for centuries after Antiquity. Another, even later instance of the amphora's afterlife can be found in the Iberian Peninsula, from where the latest specimens…

Martijn Verkuilen is the winner of the Unilever Research Prize 2022. By transferring DNA from a plant into yeast, he made the first move to produce a new drug for type 2 diabetes. He collected his prize in Wageningen on 24 November.

Gabrielle van den Berg became the Academic Director of LIAS on 1 September 2025: “I hope I’ll be able to make a real difference.”

Terracotta pottery, precious ikat fabrics and the bazaars where these goods are sold: all these can be seen in a new Louvre film premiering on Friday 9 December. University lecturer Elena Paskaleva collaborated on the film Uzbekistan a timeless journey in Central Asia about Uzbek artefacts.

Leiden University has six top bachelor's programmes according to Keuzigids universiteiten 2025, a consumer guide to university programmes. This puts Leiden in fourth place of the broad-based universities.

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

Lecture

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

In August 2022 we welcome our new colleague Dr Letty ten Harkel as Assistant Professor in Roman and Post-Roman Archaeology. For the past ten years she has built up an impressive track record in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Read the interview about her background and research…

As a twelve-year-old girl, Nicky van de Beek became intrigued by the tomb chapels in Saqqara, Egypt. Now she is doing her PhD on them, just like another Leiden Egyptologist decades earlier. Herta Mohr persevered with her research during World War II. Now she is the namesake of the first Leiden building…

Lecture, Faculty Lecture and Photo Exposition

Festival

Annual Meeting

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

Debate

Conference

Glorious sunshine, dozens of enthusiastic academics and huge numbers of Leiden residents ensured that this year’s special jubilee version of 3 October University was a great success.

Lecture

Egyptologist Marleen De Meyer has been appointed the new Director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC). Dr De Meyer has worked for the institute, which promotes Egyptian, Dutch and Flemish collaboration in the field of education and research, since 2016.

During the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) on 12 January 2026, Sarah de Rijcke said farewell as our dean. She will become the new Rector Magnificus of Leiden University. It was not the only change of leadership announced that afternoon.

‘Be yourself. Be as gay, queer, trans as you can and show the world you exist.’ These rousing words from Looi van Kessel marked the start of the third Pride Leiden for the university boat, with the theme: ‘450 years of being yourself’.

Eight scientists from Leiden University have been awarded a grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). With this Vidi funding, the researchers can set up an innovative line of research and further expand their own research group over the next five years.

Professor Joanita Vroom, together with the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) offered the course Byzantine Rome in September 2023. The course, co-taught by Vroom, Letty ten Harkel and various guest lecturers, investigated the transition of the city of Rome from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,…

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Luc Amkreutz, curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and professor of Public Archaeology at Leiden University, has a mission: to make the past accessible and relevant to a broad audience. He is the new Eugène Dubois Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Science and Engineering…

University is often a period of sexual exploration and experimentation, generally to the satisfaction of all involved. But sometimes you want it and the other doesn’t. Or vice versa. Or you can’t really tell. This is what the Safe Space play at Theater Ins Blau was about on 11 October. And: can your…

Markus Altena Davidsen was 'extremely happy' when he heard that he and his colleagues had been awarded a grant from the KNAW pilot fund for science communication. Together with partners from all over the country, they are working on a book that should inspire secondary schools to renew their education…

The Young Academy has gained a new Leiden humanities scholar as a member. University lecturer Greek language and literature Tazuko van Berkel will be appointed as a member as of March.

Flitsinterview met alumnus Kees van der Staaij: ik ben en blijf een jurist in hart en nieren

A team led by Leiden University in the Netherlands and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have, for the first time, robustly detected semi-heavy water ice around a young sunlike star. In this ice, some of the ordinary hydrogen atoms have been replaced by deuterium, a heavier variant of hydroge…

On Saturday 16 April, secondary school pupils will once again have a chance to sink their teeth into the hardest language-related questions during the final of the Linguistics Olympiad. Professor Sasha Lubotsky and PhD student Cid Swanenvleugel are both former Olympiad winners. Now they are involved…